Hamburgers - Thursday, April 9, 2015

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
 ~ J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye cartoons

Hamburger Hamlet in Westwood, California, is where I fell in love with gourmet hamburgers when I was in my 20s. My friends and I used to go to Hamburger Hamlet before or after a movie in Westwood. The food and service were always top-notch. We considered our meals there a grand treat. Their menu let you choose your toppings individually or you could order one of their combinations. One of my favorites was a teriyaki burger.

Homemade burgers are also a favorite: thick, juicy beef cooked medium well, topped with lettuce, tomato, avocado, bread-and-butter pickles, ketchup, mustard, relish, easy on the mayo, NO onions. A drippy, messy burger can't be beat.

Stanich's in Portland, Oregon, earned their reputation on AOL Cityguide's 2007 list of the "15 Burgers to Try Before You Die." Stanich's was on the list at number 11 in the nation. Here's the whole list:

1. All-American Drive-In, Massapequa, New York
2. Chris Madrid's, San Antonio
3. CityGrille, Denver
4. Dick's Drive-In, Seattle
5. Goldyburgers, Chicago
6. In-N-Out Burgers, Los Angeles
7. Jack's Old Fashion Hamburger, Oakland Park, Florida
8. O'Connell's Pub, Saint Louis
9. Peter Luger, New York
10. Roaring Fork, Phoenix
11. Stanich's, Portland, Oregon
12. Tessaro's, Pittsburgh
13. Thurman Cafe, Columbus, Ohio
14. Val's Burgers, San Francisco
15. 96th Street Steakburgers, Indianapolis

What makes Stanich's burger so wonderful? To me it was a feast on a bun, complete with a fried egg, over medium. Never before had I thought to put a fried egg on a burger. Genius combination! The burger was a menace to wrap your mouth around, but oh, so delicious!

One chain restaurant that makes this list for their burger selection is Red Robin. I love quite a few of their burger choices. You can substitute a leaner turkey burger on most of their burgers too. Now that they've added sweet potato fries to their menu, I'll be heading that way more often.

Even fast food burgers make my list, but with a lowered expectation. Dairy Queen has a decent burger; I love their special sauce. In Rice Hill, Oregon, on the west side of Interstate-5, is K&R Drive-In where our family stopped to eat whenever we traveled in the area. Their large and very tasty burgers are served with Tater Tots, which I find to be a nice change from French fries or potato chips. The piece de resistance, though, at K&R Drive-In would be the Umpqua Ice Cream cones in a rainbow of flavors.

We have been in San Antonio for three years, and have found some new burger places to satisfy my burger craving. Whataburger makes a decent fast food burger that will do in a pinch.

If I want a sensational burger in San Antonio, The Cove is my restaurant of choice. The Cove's motto is "sustainable, organic, local." I am in love with their Real Burger: grass-fed beef with American cheese, no onion for me, tomato, pickle, mayo and mustard. The flavor of the beef is what makes this burger stand out.

Last but not least is Mad Mack's Burger Company which opened three weeks ago just down the street from our RV Resort. Last night Bob and I had dinner there. It was very good. The menu is simple, but that's okay. There are plenty of yummy choices. The decor is straight out of a 50s diner. Having dinner there on our "h" word day in the blogging challenge made it easy to choose my word for the day: hamburger.

Interior of Mad Mack's Burger Company

Mad Mack's Burger Co.

Here's a look at what we ordered. I had an All-American Burger; Bob chose the fish sandwich.

All-American Burger

The fish sandwich is made with pollock. They hand bread the fish just before they cook it.
Be very hungry if you're going to eat this, or split it with someone else.

Fish sandwich

Where have you found good hamburgers?

Life Continues On -- Wed., June 27

Cotulla, Texas:

Amazing what a day off can do for your psyche. We're all entitled to bad days...you just gotta pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue on.

 

For the record, I'm no stranger to hard work. When I was 14, living in Oregon, our family didn't have much money so we kids had to go out and earn money for our clothes and school supplies. 

Summer in the Willamette Valley in Oregon means picking time: We started with strawberries in June, then progressed to blackberries, marionberries, blackcaps (which were used to make dye for USDA stamps for grade of meat), and string beans. We were up at the crack of dawn to catch the school bus that picked up all the local children and which a short time later deposited us at whatever field we would be working in that day. (Not many migrant farm workers in those days. Local children made up the work force and there were no child labor laws that we were aware of. Kids of all ages and some adults worked the fields.)

To me, strawberry picking was the worst. I'm tall. By the age of 14, I was about 5'6". Strawberry plants are on the ground. Picking them meant bending over from the waist, stooping, or crawling on hands on knees...many times in the mud and slugs...it is Oregon, after all. We worked in all weather (except heavy rain). Light rain was good because it kept the bugs--flies, mosquitoes, bees, wasps, hornets, but not the slugs--at bay and provided shade and a little coolness. However, heavy rainstorms usually meant running for the nearby orchard or a bus to stay dry. By the time we reached cover, however, we were soaking wet. If the rain continued, they took us home. If the sun came out, we went back to picking in our steam-sauna-like, miserable wet clothes.

Marionberries (a cross between a blackberry and boysenberry), raspberries and thornless blackberries were the best picking. Mornings were crisp in the shade of the berry plants,  cool dew moistened our long-sleeved white cotton shirts. Drawbacks were the thorns, but there was a quick learning curve on how to avoid the sharp, painful scratches. Oh, and from time to time there would be a three-foot-tall thistle plant to work around. Yee-ouch! We picked standing up, a bucket attached to our belt or waistband, and moved down the rows between the plants. When our bucket was full, we'd empty the berries into large, low cardboard boxes called flats. We could stack about six flats on top of each other. For each full flat, we received a punch on our pay ticket (the size of a business card). At the end of the day, each punch on our card was tallied and we were paid in cash before we boarded our bus. 

Second worst crop after strawberries was string beans. While we could stand up and pick and be shaded by the six-foot-high plants, I was allergic to the beans. When the tip of the beans touched my wrists or forearms, an itchy rash developed. Wearing long-sleeved shirts helped a little, but I still had an itchy, allergic reaction. The other problem with picking beans was putting all the beans into a burlap bag and dragging the bag down the row with you. Heavy and heavier, who knew string beans could weigh so much? And you had to make sure the bags were FULL. Our bosses made us shake the bags down and even sit on the bag to compress the beans. That way we could fill the bags completely to the top. When the bags were full, we had to drag/carry them to the person who weighed the bags. If memory serves me correctly a full bag weighed somewhere between 40-60 lbs. (Some bags were larger than others.)

I can't imagine how my younger brother and sister did it. My sister was 12 and my brother was 10. We worked three or four summers in the crop fields. Made us strong and instilled a work ethic in us. Kids today could use some good, hard, honest-to-goodness work. It would help with the obesity epidemic as well. When you're outside working, you're not inside eating, plus you burn many calories being on your feet picking all day.

By the end of our workdays, we were beat and completely filthy (especially after picking strawberries). Some days Mom came to pick us up when she wasn't working. If we got off early, my sister, brother and I would walk to the creek on the way home. Sometimes we'd catch crawdads or, if it was really hot, we'd just sink down into that creek and cool off. At its deepest it wasn't more than four or five feet, and it sure felt good. Mom would pick us up and we'd sit in the bed of the pickup and let the breeze from driving cool and dry us. Somehow we survived without seatbelts. Sometimes we would ride up on the side of the pickup bed. Horrors!

It was nice getting paid in cash every day. Each of us kids set up our own savings account and the money went into them. Once or twice a week, we'd go to Nap's Grocery Store and have a malt: 19 cents for a small and 29 cents for a medium, any flavor. Mmmmm...those were so tasty. Once in a while, for a super special treat, we went to Dairy Queen. Haven't outgrown DQ to this day.

When fall came, a whole new crop started--nuts (walnuts, filberts/hazelnuts). Fall in the Pacific Northwest is rainy and cold. Harvesting nuts usually meant going under trees dripping rain and raking piles of leaves and nuts, then hand sorting the nuts and putting them into burlap bags. If memory serves me, I think we only did one season of walnuts and filberts. That was enough.

This morning Bob had the excitement of thunder, lightning AND pouring rain. The rain didn't last long enough to create big, muddy puddles or flood anything, but it dampened the caliche dust enough so we're not getting clouds of dust in our faces when the semis pull up. (Gate guarders, you know what I'm talking about.)

Bob and the Gate Guard Guys had lunch at DQ today. Six showed up and they had a nice time talking and catching up. Attendees were Bob A., Bob H., Jerry R., Jerry B., Bruce S., and Dennis. 

Followup items: 

1. The water pump on our LOMA-provided trailer was replaced today. The switch went out. It took our repairman, John, an extra day to come out, but he had to buy the replacement head for the pump. I made a 3-2-1 Cake to thank him for fixing our water pump. He really appreciated it. 
2. Speaking of 3-2-1 Cake, I really must thank Susan again for turning me on to this easy-to-make cake. If any of the drivers are having a particularly bad day, I can make this little cake in the microwave. Total time from start to finish about two minutes. The drivers LOVE a nice warm, fresh-from-the-oven cake! One guy was so appreciative he brought us two old-fashioned GLASS bottles filled with Coca Cola! Nice.
3. Our refrigerator: Apparently the lack of coldness is a common complaint in RV refrigerators during a very hot spell. We called a very helpful mobile RV repair man (Russell of Scruss and Smith RV) who told us over the phone we needed to put a fan in the outside compartment behind the refrigerator where the coils are. You see, all day long, the unrelenting summer sun beats down on that side of the 5er which is overheating the coils. Bob took our small fan from the bedroom and put it in by the refrigerator coils. He also took a wet paper towel and washed the dust off the coils. Pretty soon the refrigerator should be humming along providing us with nice cold food. Who do you think we're going to call if something breaks? Russell. He was so nice to give us the info.
4. Something else we learned today from John, our LOMA repairman. During the high heat of Texas summer we need to leave both side doors of our generator open to cool the engine. He said if we don't, the generator will over-heat and shut down. No, no, no, no, no...definitely don't want THAT to happen!
5. Today the wind shifted so the gas smell blew off into the mesquite trees. Nice to have a respite. As soon as I said that, the wind shifted and guess what? Yep, it's blowing right at us again. P.U.

Kitty picture alert...don't scroll down if you aren't interested in fur-kid pics. Bowie hogged all the photos last time, now it's Sunnie's turn...

"Yeah, so? I'm comfortable. Leave me alone."

Uh-oh. A disturbance in the bedspread. What could it be?

It's Sunnie...directly under the air conditioning duct.

I took the above picture by putting the camera on the floor and shooting directly up under the covers. You can see the overhead light at the top of the photo. What a look he's giving me.

So cute!

Can you tell I'm back to normal??

Travel Bug out.

Ice Cream Social -- Wed., June 20

Cotulla, Texas:

"I love it when a plan comes together." 

~Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith quote from "The A Team"

At 1:00 pm today the gate guard ladies had a social event at Dairy Queen in Cotulla. Ten showed up. Quite a nice turn out for the distance some had to drive. Our topics ranged from generators to EMS to snakes to caliche dust roads to animals to laundromats to schedules... pretty much all over the place. Our nice little get away lasted 1-1/2 hours. Some of us would like to meet every other week if it works out.

Loose ends from previous days: LOMA took back our size 3X vests. I got a new size L/XL which fits way better! Our supervisor also delivered our Security Level II pocket cards and name tags.

Today when our fresh water was delivered, Bob talked to David about what's going on with our water pump and filter. If you remember a couple of days ago our water pressure went down while I was showering and we had to turn on our 5er water pump. 

Well, apparently, local water sources have some sand in the water. The delivery guys who pump up the water for us have to be careful not to get their fresh water hoses too far down in the water or they will pick up sand. Yep we had sand plugging our water filter and the water pump on our generator trailer. 

The next time David comes out, he will bring his vacuum hose to clean out the bottom of our fresh water tank to get the sand out. The water pump and water filter are sand free (for the moment). We have good water pressure again.

Starting in the next week or so, we will have a new LOMA supervisor at our gate. 

Our gate is picking up work wise. Tomorrow flowback starts. This afternoon and evening new equipment started rolling in and the guys said, "See you in the morning" when they left for the day. Huge tanks are being brought in tonight in preparation for tomorrow. The drivers said they had another trip tonight. It must be a long trip because it's been two hours since they left here and they're not back yet. But I'm sitting here waiting for them. Many semi drivers are so young, I'm sure I'm old enough to be their grandma!

Wildlife sighting: The scissor-tailed flycatcher hangs out on the telephone line, but never close enough to get a good picture.

Thank you to Jerry, a close-by gate guard, who loaned two books to us about the Texas Rangers. Bob finished one book in one day and is almost finished with the second book. After Jeffery Deaver's "The Burning Wire," I will read the Texas Ranger books before we give them back to Jerry.

And a big shout out to Kit, Jerry's wife, who bought my lunch at DQ today.

That about covers the day. Thanks for reading.

Travel Bug out.

Gate Update -- Thurs., June 14

Cotulla, Texas:

For the past few days our gate has been slow (1-2 log pages). Last night I had one trailer come in to pick something up at 11:48 p.m. Bob didn't have anyone until 6:00 a.m. today.

Some workers say they're wrapping it up; others say not. Don't know if we're movin' or stayin'. I hope someone lets us know before moving day.

Dairy Queen in Cotulla has become the ladies meetin' place. I've set up a meet for next Wednesday,  June 20, at 1:00 p.m. Last week there were three of us and it looks like we may see two or three more this coming week, depending on how busy people are and whether or not someone's moving. It's really nice to have good interactions and conversations because gate guarding can make you feel (choose one): isolated, stir-crazy, ding-y, imprisoned, bored, at one with the desert scrub, buggy, unkempt.

Seems people have been dropping dogs off in the desert and the dogs are finding their way to gate guard's RVs. Kit and Jerry had a mama Labrador decide that under their motor home was a perfect nursery. She gave birth to 11 (!) puppies. Now Kit & Jerry will be the first to tell you they're not particularly dog people. What to do? Kit asked all drivers coming in their gate if they knew anyone who wanted a dog with puppies. One worker called his wife and they decided to take mama and all pups! Wow. That's a lot of dogs. And quite a relief for Kit and Jerry!

Another gate guard couple with three indoor cats had a scrawny, malnourished, limping dog show up at their RV. They've never had dogs so weren't quite sure what to do with it. There is no Humane Society in this area. Their solution: go to the store and buy food, bed, chew toys, and treats. I'm not sure, but I think they just adopted a dog. The dog bed is under their RV. Outside temperatures are at 100 or more degrees.

How can people so heartlessly drop off an animal in the desert scrub in summer spring? Do they think a mountain lion will eat it? Do they think it will die of thirst and starvation? Why couldn't they take it to a no-kill shelter in San Antonio, 1-1/2 hours away? It's sad.

We're six weeks into our gate guarding gig; have five weeks left to go. Think about this, our temps have been in the highs 90s to low 100s for the past two weeks. This is spring. Summer starts next Wednesday. So far, so good with our air conditioners and generator. Seems even the bugs bug off at this time of year. Haven't seen any mosquitoes or bite-y flies for over a week.

The caliche dust is like a fine sand. We have to dust frequently, wash our air conditioner filters, vacuum, scrub the linoleum and shake out the area rugs. When I washed out the main air conditioner filter yesterday, I filled the kitchen sink with water, rinsed out the filter. The water was so sandy, I had to drain the sandy water and repeat the rinse two more times. Dirrrrrty!

Bob is plowing through more Lee Child books. I am working on reading "American Idol," about 3/4's of the way through it. It's interesting to learn about the back story of how Idol came to be, the audition process, the backstage happenings, the judges' interactions, the staging, the marketing...it's Hollywood, but inspired by the British "Pop Idol."

Bowie and Sunnie (cats) are doing great. Sunnie loves the new wet food we bought on Tuesday. Bowie turns his nose up at it and won't even try it. 

Bowie says, "Why are we changing wet food? It it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Sunnie on the other hand enthuses, "Oh yum! This is so much better than that other stuff! More, more."

At least one of the cats will eat the food we bought Tuesday.

Bob went into town this afternoon to pick up mail and buy some groceries. Main grocery item we were hoping for was more of the delectable Texas peaches. The Super S in Cotulla does not have them. They had rock hard peaches from California. Yuck. No more fresh, local peaches for us today. He did bring back corn on the cob, apricots, avocados and tomatoes. I plan to make fresh guacamole tomorrow. Mmmmmmm.

For dinner tonight we had a huge green salad with tuna salad on top. Very satisfying and healthy. Tomorrow night, tostadas with guacamole and Cholula hot sauce.

And just so you know, our refrigerator is nice and cold again! It's the little things out here.

Travel Bug out.